In the village of Great Pelfe, Maureen Stubbs from the Midsomer Conservation Society is stabbed to death after openly accusing builder Geoff Rogers and councillor James Otley of conspiring to ruin the look of the village by rushing through a plan to build modern housing.

Zoe Stock, a brilliant pianist, is attending a music school run by the Fielding family when she believes she sees a woman drown herself in the river, having left her baby on the bank. When the police arrive there is nothing to support her claim but Barnaby recalls that a mystery woman died in identical circumstances eighteen years earlier.

At a Wild West show in Ford Florey Faye Lennox is murdered. She was the estate manager and lover of unpopular farmer Jack Fincher, who is engaged in a long-standing dispute with neighbour Silas Burbage over a piece of waste-land. Soon afterwards Fincher is lassoed and dragged to his death.

Two years previously in the village of Milton Cross, a feudal estate owned by benevolent landlord Edward Milton, tailor Gerald Woodley died of a heart attack. Now his widow Sonia is keen to make confession to the Reverend Morland but is knocked unconscious and stabbed to death on the way to see him.